Resignation of Dilaton as moderator

I regret all the turmoil caused by my hasty steps done out of fear and incorrect understanding of the rules. I also apologize for my secretive activities and the bad climate this has caused on the site.

Only recently did I realized that the time when I was terrified and did no longer dare to show up on the site was a very bad and scary experience for others too.

From the responses to the two line version of this message, and also from a few comments elsewhere, I got the impression that by now more than enough has been said concerning the past and that it is better to let it rest in peace.

Instead I focus now on the amazing process that happened on PhysicsOverflow in the last two weeks, lead to a reconciliation of the different points of view, and nourishes the hope for a lasting peace of a quality I couldn't have dreamt of even a week ago.

I am thankful for the experience of the last few weeks, which made me see many things in a different light than before. It seems I have learned a lot.

Ron and I have learnt to know and understand each other much better, and I think it can now safely be said that we respect and acknowledge each other's somewhat complementary point of views concerning certain things. Both points of view are needed to make PhysicsOverflow successfull and help the site fullfill its two-fold mission of offering open literature review and allowing for high-level Q&A.

I now also better understand that Yiyang always wanted to save the site from breaking apart, and who knows, maybe he did. So I apologize to you, Yiyang, for first having misunderstood and not properly appreciated your efforts to help PhysicsOverflow.

Everybody knows that it took me quite a while to get used to Vladimir's style of contributing, but we have made peace already in the context of my intention of resignation.

As now the atmosphere on PhysicsOverflow has become much better (it seems springtime has set in), I can now happily retire without any apprehension left. If Arnold would be able and willing to take up for me, I would not even care about getting re-elected.

The heavy but ultimately very positive experience of the past few weeks make me more optimistic about the future of PO than ever, and I wish PhysicsOverflow and its community all the best.

Well, I'm quite an elephant-skin, so I was never really hurt to the slightest degree, and I only made a hypothetical case of me being hurt when discussing the boundary of feelings with Arnold, so don't worry. Still, it's a relief for me to see you are finally no longer burdened with bad feelings, cheers!

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2 Answers

+ 3 like- 0 dislike

Despite your mistakes, Dilaton, I greatly appreciate your heroic achievement, together with Dimension10 and Polarkernel, in getting the site up and running for the past year to its current state. That in itself is enough to show the level of commitment you have to the continued development of PO.

I believe you've admitted and learned from your mistakes and I would therefore gladly renominate you again in the elections, if my rep was high enough. Realistically, there won't be any academics with the required stamina and motivation to handle the time consuming role of moderating, which just leaves you and Dimension10 ( who will probably also be renominated again because of the excellent job he's done)

However, I would suggest that you explain what you did, why you did it, apologize again if necessary to the people concerned, and explain how you intend to moderate the site in future. So far the site has succeeded in achieving its aim of allowing out-spoken rudeness without getting people banned for a year as with PSE. But you need to be clear to the community from the start as to how you're going to moderate the site, and let the community decide if they want you to moderate it this way.

+1 for the first half, but as for the second half, from my point of view, there is no need to ever rehash the old nonsense again. I personally support Dilaton with full commitment, and with heartfealt gratitude, and if I never hear about that old bullshit again I could die happy.

@Ron Maimon I'm grateful to you for persistently questioning and harassing the moderators to ensure ethical standards are being maintained.

If any moderator states at the elections that they intend to delete low-level comments or ban users that persistently post low-level stuff on here, and they get voted in, then we need to abide by that. If we don't like it we can leave or post our objections on Meta. But still, that's the moderating style the community voted in.

Dilaton wanted to maintain high standards here, introducing banning and deleting comments, which the rest of us felt was going too far above his moderating powers agreed right at the beginning, even if his intention was for the sake of creating an inviting professional atmosphere.

@physicsnewbie: Some things are decided by elections, others are guaranteed with more firmness, like a constitutional guarantee, so that it would require a large supermajority to change them. Your policy about repeated low-level material is not that bad, but low-level means undergraduate level, and is easy to spot. If a moderator got elected with a promise of repealing a fundamental principle of the site, like the right to user final-say on text, for instance, it should be with an extreme supermajority or unanimity, because everyone here has planned for the future of the site based on the expectation that this stuff is permanent, despite political pressure against, which always comes.

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